Feedback

Feedback collects success stories: short testimonials that members write about what the hub did for their work, which the hub then quotes on its front page and on a "Notable Quotes" page. It is not a survey tool and it does not gather structured responses. One member writes one story about themselves, an editor reads it, and the editor decides whether it is good enough to quote.

The component also owns /feedback, a signpost page that points visitors at the several different ways of telling the hub something — a success story, a support ticket, a wish list entry, a poll — without owning any of them but the first.

Whether your hub needs it

Almost every hub is funded by somebody who wants to know it was worth it. Feedback exists for that: a stock of members' own words about what the hub did for their work, which you can put on the front page, quote in a renewal, or hand to a communications office. If your hub does not have to justify itself to anyone, you can leave this component alone — it does nothing until someone submits a story.

The typical case: an annual report is due in six weeks and you need three sentences from three different members saying the hub mattered. Mail the /feedback/success_story link to a handful of people whose work you know, and the stories arrive over the following fortnight.

There is one thing to understand before you use it at all: the consent checkbox is recorded but never enforced. The author's answer to "I authorize … to use my quote" is stored on the row and shown in the list, and nothing in the site or the modules ever looks at it. Publishing is entirely in your hands, which means the check is yours to make. See What publishing means.

What it is not: it is not a survey and it does not collect structured answers — there is one free-text box and no questions. It is also not the place members complain: the Report a Problem card on /feedback goes to Support, and this component never sees it. And nothing here notifies anyone. A story sits in the list until a person opens the screen and reads it, so put a note in your calendar rather than expecting the hub to tell you.

Collecting a story

A logged-in member reaches the form at /feedback/success_story, from the Write a Success Story button on /feedback. Guests are sent to the login screen first. The form asks for:

Field	Notes
Name	Prefilled from the member's profile. Required.
School / Organization	Prefilled from the member's profile. Required.
Pictures	Drag-and-drop upload, any number. Held in a temporary directory until the story is saved. Extensions and size limit come from the Media component's settings, and each file is virus-scanned.
Describe your experience	The story itself. Required. Scripts, images and all other tags are stripped on save; line breaks become <br />.
I authorize … to use my quote on the … website.	Consent to publish. A checkbox.
I authorize … to contact me for further information.	Consent to be contacted. A checkbox.

Saving stores a row in #__feedback and moves the pictures into <upload path>/<id>/. The member gets a thank-you page. Nothing is published and nobody is notified; the story simply waits in the administrator's list.

The two consent checkboxes are the reason this component exists, and they are the only record of what the author agreed to. They are shown but disabled on the administrator's form once a story has been saved, so an editor cannot change them afterwards.

The Quotes list

Open the component under Components > Feedback. The list shows every story that has been submitted, newest first.

Column	Notes
ID	The record's number. Sortable.
Submitted	The date the story was sent. Sortable.
Author	The author's name; a link to the edit form. Sortable.
Organization	The author's affiliation. Sortable.
Quote	The first hundred characters of the full quote, falling back to the short quote, then to the mini quote, then to (blank). A link to the edit form.
Notable Quotes	Yes when the story is selected for the Notable Quotes page.
OK to Publish	Yes when the author consented to publication.

Above the list, type a name into the search box and press Go; Clear restores the full list. The search matches the author's name only, not the text of the quote.

The toolbar offers Options, New, Edit, Delete and Help, each shown only if you hold the matching permission. Delete removes the record and its whole picture directory, without a confirmation step and without a trash state.

Editing a story

The form is in two columns. The left column is the story:

Field	Notes
Select for Notable Quotes page.	The publish switch. See What publishing means.
Author full name	Required.
Organization	Required.
User id	The uidNumber of the member who sent the story. Read-only once set. Leave it blank for a quote from someone with no account.
Author consents	Two disabled checkboxes recording what the author agreed to on the front-end form: consent to publish, and consent to be contacted. Editable only while creating a record by hand.
Short Quote	An editor's trim of the story, for places with limited room. 270 characters. If you leave it blank, the first 270 characters of the full quote are used.
Mini Quote	A 150-character version, for the front-page quote module. Defaults to the first 150 characters of the short quote.
Full Quote	The story as submitted. Required.
Quote submitted	The date, editable as plain text.
Editor notes	Private working notes: where the quote came from, how to reach the author. Never shown on the site.

The right column uploads and removes pictures. Each existing picture has a Delete button, which marks it for removal on the next save; the file input below adds more. A new record must be saved before pictures can be attached.

Creating a record from the toolbar's New button first asks for a Username, so that a quote typed in by an editor can be attached to the right member; leave it blank for someone with no account.

What publishing means

Only one thing decides whether a story appears anywhere on the site: the Select for Notable Quotes page. checkbox. With it ticked, the story is shown by:

• /feedback/quotes, the list of notable quotes.
• The Quotes module (mod_quotes), which lists notable quotes and can cycle through them.
• The Random Quote module (mod_randomquote), which shows one at a time and is the usual front-page fixture.

Which makes selecting a quote a two-step job rather than one. Following the annual-report example:

1. Go to Components > Feedback. The stories are listed newest first.
2. Read the OK to Publish column first. A story marked anything but Yes is not publishable, whatever it says — the author read the same sentence you did and declined. Ignore it or write to the author and ask.
3. Open a story whose column reads Yes and read the Full Quote.
4. Write a Short Quote and a Mini Quote by hand. Left blank they are cut from the full quote at 270 and 150 characters, which usually stops mid-sentence. This is an edit of somebody's words for publication, so make it one they would recognise.
5. Tick Select for Notable Quotes page. and save.
6. Check /feedback/quotes and, if you run the modules, the front page.

Step 5 is reversible — untick it and the quote comes off every page it was on. Step 2 is the one that is not, in the sense that matters: a quote published without consent has been published, and taking it down afterwards does not undo that. Delete is worse still, since it removes the record and its whole picture directory with no confirmation and no trash state, so the consent record goes with it.

The Random Quote module's Quote pool parameter offers Flash rotation, Notable quotes and All, but only Notable quotes selects anything sensible: the other two ask for stories that are not marked notable. Its second filter, on the mini quote, compares a text column against 1 or 0 and matches almost nothing. Leave that module on Notable quotes and expect it to show the same quote each time rather than a random one.

The /feedback page

/feedback is a landing page with up to four cards:

• Write a Success Story — the form above.
• Report a Problem — a new support ticket. See Support.
• Add to the Wish List — shown only if the Wishlist component is enabled. See Wishlist.
• Take a Poll — shown only if the Poll component is enabled; it opens /feedback/poll, which renders the Poll module. See Poll.

Two paths under /feedback are redirects rather than pages of their own: /feedback/report_problems opens the new-ticket form, and /feedback/suggestions goes to the wish list.

The page's introduction text, and the sentence pointing at Notable Quotes, come from the language file en-GB.com_feedback.ini. That sentence links to /about/quotes/ as a fixed path, so it only works on a hub that has a menu item there; the component's own quotes page is at /feedback/quotes.

There are five site layouts, so a menu item of type Feedback can be pointed at the landing page, the success story form, the list of quotes, the poll page or the thank-you page.

Options

The component has two settings, both about pictures: Default picture, the placeholder shown for an author with no photograph, and Upload path, the directory under the hub's application root where the picture folders are created — /site/quotes by default. Both are listed in the configuration reference.

The Permissions tab sets, per user group, who may configure the component, reach its screens, and create, delete, edit or change the state of a quote. Reaching the screens at all requires Access Administration Interface.